"You're never looking back, you're always looking forward, you haven't got time to look back," says Annie Nightingale in Bird on the Wireless (BBC4). She then looks back, spends the next hour looking back in fact, at her life in music and some of the artists she's been passionate about over the years.

So many years. The 50s – growing up with the family radiogram in the living room. Then a journalism course, because she saw Roman Holiday and thought journalism was like that, "running around in sports cars going 'hold the front page'." (Me too, that's what I thought, Annie!).

In the 60s, the music started to get a bit better, with the Beatles, the Stones and the Byrds. The 70s meant Bowie, and perhaps less importantly King Crimson; and for Annie a job at Radio One. Where she still is! OK, so she's now only allowed on once a week, in the middle of the night, but she's still there, at 69, Grannie Nightingale. In a business obsessed with youth and the new, that's a massive achievement.

And isn't the middle of night when nightingales are supposed to be singing? Actually, she says she can't sing, in spite of the name, but man can she talk. It just comes pouring out, a stream of words and thoughts and memories. Bleuurgh.

The amazing thing about her is that she's just gone along with the music, which is what she actually meant about not having time to look back. So when she woke up one day, and the beat had changed, to acid house, Annie went with it. And now it's all about grime and dubstep. It's so brilliant, that for a 69-year-old it's not all about the past, but about what's going on right now.

And that's reflected in the people who are on hand to say nice things about her. As well as Macca and Paul Weller and Mick Jones from the Clash, here's Tinchy Stryder, who was a baby during acid house. "She's still down, she's still cool with it," he says. "She's just a legend man." She is, man.